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UK monitoring 30 terror cells, 2000 suspects

(News.com.au) BRITAIN’S security services believe up to 30 Islamist militant cells are plotting attacks and they are monitoring 2000 suspects and another 2000 sympathisers, the new security minister said today.Alan West told BBC radio that the scale of the security operation was “quite dramatic” as he backed extending the 28-day limit on the time suspects can be held without charge.He issued the warning following three botched car bombings in London and Glasgow at the end of last month – attempts that came just days after Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister.“I have come back to this after about 16 months away from it and I have to say I was quite concerned when I saw what the level of threat is,” said Lord West, the former chief of defence intelligence and now the security and counter-terrorism minister.“If one looks at what our security service and police are looking at on a day-to-day basis, they are now monitoring over 200 groupings or networks which to varying degrees are threatening our security,” he said the BBC.“There are 30 that are actually being looked at very closely indeed because they have got to the stage where they are gathering materials and doing things which could lead in fairly short term to doing something if they wanted to.“This means that effectively about 2000 individuals are being monitored in varying degrees of closeness and probably about another 2000 loosely connected to them. The scale of this whole thing is quite dramatic.”Lord West said security agencies were increasingly successful in gathering intelligence on Islamist plots, often gleaning vast amounts of information from computers.However, he said the police and security services needed more time to analyse the data, and were hamstrung by the 28-day limit on holding suspects.“I think, looking at the complexity of this, there will be occasions when we need more than 28 days,” he said.“How we exactly do that is something that I hope we can come to some sort of consensus on, because I believe it is so important for this nation,” he said.